


Marion(ette)

by AquaMarinara



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: A holiday fic, Anywho Jughead Jones is oblivious is always, F/M, So their good friend Archie Andrews helps her out, With some gothic lit undertones, and Betty Cooper is pining!, and they come up with a plan to clue Detective Jones in, because why not?, jk, oh my god they were roommates, that's it that's the fic, there's also the fact that...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-09-02 09:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquaMarinara/pseuds/AquaMarinara
Summary: They walk all the way to 50th Street together, him with a determined look on his face as he braves the stinging winter wind, her with a grin tucked into her quilted scarf.Manhattan’s finest detective finally has a new case to crack.orBetty Cooper decides to give Detective Jughead Jones just a bit more work this holiday season.





	1. Icicles, Lights, and Owls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [milkshakesandmurders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkshakesandmurders/gifts).



> Hello, everyone! Long time no see, I know.
> 
> You can all thank @milkshakesandmurders for bringing me back to fic writing with her wonderful prompt:  
> “Omg! They were roommates” - Betty and Jughead.  
> Betty has had a crush on Jughead since, forever.  
> Jughead has no idea… because, Jughead.  
> Betty (with the ‘guidance’ of her best friend, Archie) puts together a 24 day advent calendar.  
> Each day has a special clue for her clueless roommate.  
> Jughead tells Veronica, his best friend at work—who is hands down convinced it’s the woman in charge of the mailroom—Ethel Muggs.  
> As the days edge closer to 24…Jughead realises—the clues are close to home.
> 
> I kind of took it and ran (and it somehow got a bit...creepy? I promise not in a weird way, though. I guess I'm just making up for all the Halloween fics I didn't write).
> 
> Something I feel needs clarifying before we jump in is that Betty will be sending Jug a new gift every single day, and not all 24 gifts in an advent calendar all at once (because we all know the boy would open them all up on Dec. 1st just to get ahead in his investigation).
> 
> Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, I hope you enjoy it!

The blue spruce rests in the corner of their living room, upright and unassuming, as if it hasn’t just been manhandled up three flights of stairs and deposited hastily by three best friends, all sweating through their layers.

Jughead, pushing the strands of hair off of his forehead, has made a show of dropping to their couch, exhausted. He shoots a pointed look at the blonde catching her breath by the circular dining room table at the entrance to their galley kitchen. It had been her idea, after all, to find a Christmas tree on Black Friday when the threat of bustling crowds and violent shoppers far outweighed any advertised discounts. In fact, it had been her conviction that they  _ could only settle for a Blue Spruce, Juggie— _ because  _ of course _ no other evergreen could bring that festive spirit to their apartment—that had dragged the three of them all the way to Brooklyn for an overpriced tree. Everywhere else had been sold out. It  _ was  _ Black Friday, after all.

“You guys have ornaments, right?” Archie asks as he pulls a beer out of his best friends’ fridge. They kept the alcohol for him, anyway—neither Jughead nor Betty were big drinkers on their own, and the bottles were carefully stashed towards the back of the fridge, their numbers always kept in check under Betty’s watchful eye. If one went missing and she hadn’t been made aware of it by their redheaded friend, all Hell would break loose; she always had been the one to care the most about the Jones family genetics and predispositions. She certainly cared far more than his father ever had.

“Because if we hauled this tree all the way from fricking Brooklyn just to leave it naked in your living room for a whole month I just might throttle you both.”

“Don’t look at me, alright? This was her idea. She’s always been good at getting the two of us to do her dirty work.”

“Dirty work?!” she shouts from a few feet away, her voice rising in the way it always does when the two of them gang up on her. “Oh sure, because getting both of your lazy asses off the couch and doing something productive the day after Thanksgiving is just pure  _ evil.  _ On par with the deeds of Satan himself.” She rolls her eyes, and gestures to where Jughead’s sprawled out on the couch. “Why don’t you get up and show Arch where you hid the ornaments.”

“Oh no, Betts, I’ve had enough for today. That fern looks perfect right where it is, right  _ as  _ it is. You can doll it up tomorrow, after I’ve had a few hours of blissful rest and another gallon of coffee.”

He catches her glare as his eyes shut, and then her annoyed mutterings fade to nothingness as his mind drifts to the case he and Ronnie had been assigned the other day, before leaving for the holiday break. That reminds him. He’s got to call her as soon as—

~~~

She and Archie have finished wrapping the tinsel around the branches of the spruce when he wakes up, hair disheveled and eyes squinting against the bright fairy lights hanging around the room. Betty’s gone all out, as the Coopers always do. They say old habits die hard, and Betty’s not entirely focused on kicking this particular one just yet. If anything, the holidays were the one time a year that the Coopers came together for anything other than a public display of perfection, and Betty enjoyed the comfort of it all.

She watches as he stretches out on the couch and blindly reaches for the single book on their end table: his work notebook, marked up in his chicken scratch handwriting and arrows that point from one disjointed theory to the next. She’s learned to stop trying to read it over his shoulder, since only Jughead Jones could ever understand the garbled mess that led him and Veronica to finally catch the leader of a drug-dealing gang stationed a few blocks south of their apartment based on one clue—a skull spray-painted on the window of a local candy store.

He and Veronica are the best investigative minds at their precinct, and she would never be the one to come between him and his crime-fighting, but today’s a holiday. A rare holiday, during which the three of them are all together, and there’s no way she’s letting him waste the afternoon trying to solve the newest “mystery of the century”.

“Jug, do you mind grabbing the star for me? I think I left it in the coat closet with the Halloween decorations.”

He looks up slowly, his sharp blue eyes peeking out from behind raven locks, and then his gaze drops back to his notebook. “Have Arch get it when he comes back from the bathroom. I think I found a connection between the bubblegum wrapper and the—”

“Jughead.”

“Crime waits for no man, Betts, and I’m going to figure this out tonight. It finally hit me, you know? I’ve just got to put together the last few bits and pieces and then I’ll call Ron to let her know.” He scribbles something onto the inked up page and then taps the back end of the pen against his lips in thought. She watches, hand on her hip in annoyance, as his eyes widen quickly, and then he’s rushing past Archie in the hallway to grab his coat from the closet.

Archie’s eyes blink once. Twice. Then he turns to watch his best friend run out the door, beanie haphazardly shoved over his head and coat dangling from one arm. “What was that about?” he asks as he wanders closer to the tree to admire the lights that flicker on when Betty plugs them in.

She waves a hand as she straightens up and reaches for the mug of tea she’d left on the fireplace mantle—on a coaster, of course. Old habits, and all that.

“He’s just figured some new piece of the puzzle out and can’t wait even a second to find Veronica. They’re like that, those two. Always working odd hours and disappearing into the night to meet up at some 24-hour hipster coffee shop. It must work for them, though,” she sighs before sipping at her tea, “because Jones and Lodge are the best detectives in town, as far as I’ve heard,” she notes dryly. The mug settles heavily back onto its spot on the mantle as she walks around the coffee table and over to drop onto the tiny couch that Jughead had just vacated. “Not a case they can’t crack.”

“Right,” she hears Archie snark from across the room. She looks up to find him staring at her intently, hand smoothing down the hem of his too-short shirt.

“What?”

“He still hasn’t figured out that you’ve liked him. Since, like, forever.”

“Arch—” she starts, but then lets her head fall back onto the couch pillow. He’s not wrong.

“I’m just saying, it’s time he figured it out, but in his own way. He wants to ditch you for work time and time again, even over the holidays? Fine. We’ll just give him more.”

She quirks an eyebrow at the ceiling, intrigued, and sits up a bit straighter. Her knees draw into her chest, and her arms fall open in invitation. “Hit me.”

~~~

Their packages come at eight. Letters and bills get slotted into their mailbox at the bottom of the stairs, but larger boxes get carried up three flights of stairs by whatever poor soul’s working their block that day. They’re rare, the packages, but when they do come, it’s always at eight. Right as both she and Jughead are about to slip out of the apartment and walk to 50th Street together to catch their respective trains to work.

Waking up early, another one of those damned Cooper habits, has actually come in handy, allowing her full reign of their only bathroom for as much time as she needs before he drowsily trudges into the shower every morning. Her internal clock manages to wake her on weekends as well, and he’s learned to get up with her—if only to catch her freshly-plated pancakes while they’re still hot. 

So when a knock sounds at the door at eight a.m. on the Saturday morning of December 1st, they’re both starting off their days at the breakfast table—Jughead with a printed newspaper (ever since rooming with a Journalism major, he’d sworn to buy one every single morning for fear of the industry going extinct) and Betty with her favorite mug of Earl Grey. He looks up from the news to shoot her a look that reads  _ did you really order yet another set of fairy lights off of the internet _ , and she just shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders in response. He sighs, drops the paper to the wooden table, and lifts himself out of his chair to answer the door.

“Jughead Jones?” she hears from her spot in the corner of the room. She can’t see the figure around the open front door, but she watches as Jughead’s shoulders tense.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve got mail, dude,” comes the lazy response, and then Jughead’s shutting the door behind him with his foot, both hands busy inspecting the tiny US Mail box in his grasp. It’s slim, certainly longer than a ring box but no wider, and just as deep.

He sets it on the table warily, left hand reaching up to run through his hair—a nervous tick—and Betty leans across the table to pick at the tape covering the opening to the box. He swats her fingers away quickly, jerkily, and she smirks at him.

“Nervous?”

“No.” He shakes his head quickly and reaches down to pull off the tape. A bundle of bubble wrap falls out and rolls to a stop on the table, unwrapping to reveal a glass ornament.

“It’s an icicle ornament,” she giggles, cheeks reddening as she watches confusion flicker across his features. “See, Jug, it’s a sign.” She pauses for a beat, catches his gaze, and drops her voice to an overly serious tone. “Even the universe wants you to decorate that tree.”

He rolls his eyes, no more dramatically than usual, and she cracks a grin at the action. “Right,” he drawls sarcastically. “No, I’m sure it’s just another one of JB’s joke gifts. She finds the weirdest shit funny.”

“Really? Well, I think you should still go over there and find it a spot on the tree. Get in the spirit,” she urges, gesturing to the heavily-decorated evergreen in the opposite corner of the room. 

“Fine,” he grumbles, hand swooping down to pick the ornament up off the table. His middle finger catches on the sharpened tip of the icicle, though, and he curses as he brings the finger to his mouth. Blood drips from the spot where his finger comes in contact with his lips, but he’s quick to wipe it away. “I’ll tell you one thing: I’m certainly in the  _ spirit _ now, Betts,” he mumbles, and she grins as she reaches for the ornament herself.

“Oh come on, you big baby, it’s just a tiny piece of glass.” She manages to carry it around the couch, past the coffee table, and over to the tree without incident, and hangs it on the open branch above her. “Look, not too hard, huh?” she teases, pausing a moment to admire it as it glints in the morning sunlight amongst the other baubles. “There’s even a little  **I** etched into it, Jug. How cute.”

“An  _ I _ ?” comes the response from across the room, mumbled as he now sits, staring into the pit of black coffee resting on the table before him.

“Yeah, an I. Or maybe it’s a 1. Or both. Either way, it looks gorgeous.”

He turns to catch a momentary rainbow of light reflect off the sharpened tip, and he has to admit, “Yeah—yeah, it does.”

His finger continues to bleed lightly onto the mug in his grasp.

~~~

The next morning, it’s a box full of blue lights with gold wiring.

“UPS doesn’t deliver on Sundays,” he tells the lanky deliveryman, Doiley, as he juggles the cardboard box in his hands.

“Glamazon does, sir.”

“Right.”

The tangled mess of wires unravels all over their coffee table, and Jug calls her over from his spot on the living room rug. “Betts?”

“Yeah?” she replies from the kitchen, sorting through her laundry basket to find the last of her whites so that she can finally start up that load she’s been meaning to get to.

“These yours?”

She quickly peeks around the corner into the room and shakes her head before returning to her laundry. “I’ve already ordered us enough Christmas lights to fill every single room in the apartment. Why would I spend my money on any more?”

“I don’t know, but these sure as hell aren’t mine.”

“I doubt that there’s another Jughead Jones in the rest of the country, let alone New York City. There’s no way those were meant for anyone else, Jug.”

“Well I didn’t order them,” he huffs indignantly, and she imagines him pouting childishly on the floor.

“Maybe not, but they’re yours all the same. Maybe you’ve got a secret admirer,” she comments lightly before clicking the door to the washer shut. She wanders back into the living room to fold the throw blanket lazily strewn across the back of the armchair, just in time to catch the grimace that contorts his lips.

“As if. This,” he points haughtily to the lights, “is just a sick joke.”

She nods lightly, grabs the end of the length of wire to plug into the outlet, and waits until he’s submerged in a sea of neon blue to walk down the hallway to her bedroom. “Whatever you say, Jug,” she calls back to him before shutting the door behind herself.

_ Let him drown in his blues _ , she thinks, before picking up the phone. Archie doesn’t make her wait past the first ring.

~~~

At 7:59, he’s on edge. His gaze flickers to their microwave’s clock every few seconds, double checking that the hour hasn’t switched just yet.

He grips his coffee mug just that bit harder when the knock finally comes, knuckles white around the ceramic, and she walks over to the front door for him when he can’t seem to move. She unwraps the gift for him as well, a carved wooden owl hanging from a golden thread, and places it into the awaiting palm of his hand.

It falls into the pit of his coat pocket while he waits for her to lock the apartment up behind them, and they walk all the way to 50th Street together, him with a determined look on his face as he braves the stinging winter wind, her with a grin tucked into her quilted scarf.

Manhattan’s finest detective finally has a new case to crack.


	2. Vixens, Evergreens, Yule Logs, Oak Leaves, Ursa Minor, and Joe-pye Weeds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Start paying fucking attention, Jones."
> 
> ~~~
> 
> That's it, that's the chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait; life's been hectic.
> 
> As always, thank you so very much to my beta @redundantoxymorons.
> 
> See you on the flip side!

He doesn’t tell Veronica at first. He doesn’t want to give her any more reasons to ridicule him. 

_ Ooh, secret admirer much? Hey Toni, guess what? Someone’s got a crush on Torombolo over here. Crazy, I know. _

Yeah, he’d rather not. Especially if it’s no big deal. Maybe it’s his father, making up for all the years he forgot about the holidays by sending him a bunch of random little gifts. Not likely, but it’s a theory, and that’s always a good place to start.

He doesn’t tell Veronica; he’ll figure it out on his own.

On Tuesday, they’re patrolling down West 125th Street when Veronica parks in front of the Crimson Crustacean, face passive and almost uninterested, but posture firm, alert, ready. She’s waiting, he knows. For what, he’s not sure. He’d been more focused on that morning’s gift—a carved wooden fox, on the same golden string as yesterday’s owl—than Toni’s instructions at their meeting that morning.

Veronica taps her heeled foot quickly against the floor of the vehicle, right hand reaching for her gun, and he quickly turns his head to look at her as her hazel eyes zero in on a man walking briskly out of the restaurant.

“Lodge, what the hell are you doing?” he whispers, so as not to startle her when she’s so concentrated. They’re wearing civilian clothes today, sitting in a civilian car, and when she snaps her neck to glare back at him, the pearls at her neck sway with the motion. 

“Start paying fucking attention, Jones. Targeted assault, twelve o’clock. Get your head out of whatever Hitchcock movie you rewatched last night and haven’t fully disengaged from yet and grab your gun. Now,” she grits out, and then rips the car door open and steps out in her 5-inch Pradas (a style choice nobody had gotten her to compromise on just yet) to chase down the man, who’s just stolen from the twenty year old at the Trace Bank ATM. 

He follows quickly through the back parking lot, reaching for the gun tucked under the hem of his flannel as he runs to catch up, NYPD badge swinging wildly with the suspenders that hang loose at his waist (if she got her stilettos, he got his suspenders—they’d cut a deal). He turns the corner at 126th to see the perp backed up against the red double door to the Methodist Church, Veronica in a shoulder-wide stance before him, gun pointed at his chest.

“NYPD, you have the right to remain silent,” she announces, gun still leveled. 

The perpetrator’s eyes shift from one officer to the other as his hands bunch around the balled-up dollar bills, his stern expression betraying no fear at all, and  _ he looks so smug. Like he thinks he’ll be able to get away with a few trick— _

“Jones! Handcuffs, now,” Veronica orders, snapping him out of it, and Jughead rushes to pull the perpetrator’s hands behind his back while his raven-haired partner counts the dollar bills one by one, reciting the Miranda rights as she does.

She doesn’t say anything on the drive back, the handcuffed man shuffling around in the backseat of their car, but he can tell she wants to. When they get back to the precinct, she shoots him a glare, reaches into her desk for some clear nail polish, and then slathers it over the run in her tights.

They file the paperwork away silently, content in letting Fangs ramble on about the risotto recipe he discovered last night.

~~~

Golden string, wooden ornament—except this morning it’s an evergreen tree painted dark green.

The little pointed ends of the pine’s branches dig into the palm of his hand as he grips it on the subway ride to the precinct, where Veronica’s waiting for him with a manila folder and some pointed words: “Alright, Jones, I’m going to need you focused today, alright? So snap out of whatever funk you’re in, and let’s get going.”

They pull up to a hit and run on the Northbound shoulder of Riverside Drive, and Veronica leaves the car running, lights flashing, as she steps out to examine the scratch marks above the left rear wheel.

He steps out behind her, gloves on hand, and focuses on the chips of forest green paint left behind on the silver Veep. She questions the young driver while he mindlessly collects the paint samples, the same color as that wooden evergreen.

Veronica pulls a pen and notepad out of the puffed up Gucci vest protecting her slim frame from the December cold and flips open to a new page, right after checking her phone as a text notification chimes.

“We’ve got the runner,” she declares, eyes shifting to make sure he’s heard her. He hasn’t. “Jones,” she snaps, and then he turns away from the pit of the ziplock evidence bag. “We’ve got the runner,” she reiterates, and nods briefly when he does.

They follow the fairly-undamaged Veep all the way off the exit and to the nearest mechanic, then drive back to the precinct, reports filed, and settle in as Toni walks over with a new manila folder. Veronica reaches up for it from her seat at her desk, points to Sweet Pea as her eyes scan over the printed words, and states, “You. With me. I’ve had enough of Ace Ventura for the day.”

He doesn’t mind. Not really. He’s still got that fucking evergreen.

~~~

On Thursday, he wanders from his post on their mission to catch a fleeing Wall Street banker for insider trading, too focused on the tiramisu yule log cake still in the fridge at home. He’d had the self-control to stop himself from eating it—what with edible anonymous gifts very possibly being poisoned, and all that—but that doesn’t mean his stomach won’t growl at the thought of the breakfast he could have had. Instead of watching the sidewalks for unlawful traders from Café Origine’s window-front seats, he winds up in line for a coffee and a croissant.

Veronica sighs into his earpiece as she watches the businesswoman nonchalantly pass the Café and calls Toni for backup. 

~~~

Friday, he decides he’s been keeping the situation a secret long enough. Veronica deserves better than to have a partner split between upholding the law and the creepy gifts showing up at his door. She might even end up helping—it’s not like he’s gotten anywhere on his own thus far.

His plan is to whisper about it together in the break room during Fangs’ end-of-the-week recap of all the Food Network shows’ fails, but Veronica drags him, along with all their unfinished paperwork, to the records room instead.

He’s not entirely surprised, just annoyed that they’ll be stuck in here for the next few hours—if the pile of paperwork Veronica’s brought with her is any indication—while his mug of coffee is downstairs on his desk.

“Spill,” she urges, hands on hips and eyebrow raised. “What in the hell has got your panties in such a twist this week that you haven’t been able to concentrate on a singular job?”

He sighs, carefully pulls the oak tree leaf out of his briefcase and from where it’s sandwiched between two criminal reports, and sets it on the filing cabinet in the center of the room.

“A leaf?” Veronica exclaims, hands flying up to rub at her temples. “ _ Ay, Dios mío _ .”

“It’s more than just a leaf,” he defends quickly, “I can explain.” The open briefcase reveals the ornaments from earlier in the week, all but the tiramisu yule log—which he’d actually caught Betty eating after dinner last night.  _ Note to future Jughead: Maybe don’t leave potentially poisonous foods in the fridge. _

“ _ ¿Y que? _ ”

“Uh, yeah, sorry. So, I’ve been getting some gifts since the first day of the month. Every day, eight a.m. on the dot, right as I’m about to leave for work. Even on Sunday, which is pretty crazy if you ask me, because the cost of delivery must—”

“Jughead,” she interrupts, clearly exasperated. “You’ve been getting tiny little gifts; what about them’s so special?”

“They don’t really have any correlation with each other. A few are festive, the others are about nature? Not sure. I mean, they’re like animals and trees and shit. But today’s was an oak leaf.  _ An oak leaf, _ ” he emphasizes, now staring intently at the leaf as if pure intimidation will get it to speak.

“First of all, how do you even know it’s an oak leaf? And second of all, I’m still confused as to how this fucking matters, at all.” She shuffles around to his side of the filing cabinet, almost certain she’s missing something from the angle she’s viewing it from. 

“Riverdale’s known for?” he prompts in response, as if that clears everything up.

“Maple syrup,” she replies knowingly. They’d been friends and partners since the academy, and if there was one thing anyone knew about Jughead’s home town, the so-called Town with Pep, it was the population’s affinity for maple syrup.

He finally stands up straighter, turns away from the leaf, and explains simply, “The only other kind of tree in that damned town is oak. Archie’s treehouse? In an oak. Whoever’s sending me these gifts, they know me. They know my town,  _ my childhood treehouse _ .” The more he thinks about it, the more an unsettling feeling churns in his stomach. He needs to find out what the gifts mean, what the person sending them wants, ASAP.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting, just a tiny little bit?” she asks, though her own brows are furrowed and she’s biting her lips more than usual as she paces around the storage room. 

“Whether their intentions are good or bad, the person knows where I live, Ron. That’s pretty fucking scary for a cop with enemies currently trying to break out of federal prison. ”

“True, but anyone with access to the internet knows where you live, Jug,” she waves him off. 

“Anyone with access to the internet knows where Jughead Jones lives, not  _ Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Third _ .”

Veronica stops her pacing, stiletto raised mid-step, and her eyes widen. “Start there. Who knows your full name? Can’t be that long a list, right?”

“Veronica Lodge, you’re a fucking genius,” he exhales, reaching for a pen and notepad from his briefcase, brain already in overdrive.

“That’s kind of my job, Jones.”

~~~

He can’t sleep, too hot under the piles of quilts Betty had tucked in between his comforter and his bed sheets, too cold without them. His mind races, drawing his eyes open, and he focuses on the ceiling above his bed as shadows shift and morph around the room.

The dark shape running along his closet doors forms into a fox, then a screeching owl, and Jughead’s had enough. He sits up in his bed, sweaty, and pulls his pajama shirt away from where it’s stuck to his body. He can’t sleep.

The floorboards creak under his weight as he steps out of his bedroom and into the kitchen, where he pulls the fridge door open to flood the room with blinding light.

They don’t have all that many leftovers, as Betty had cleaned out the fridge last night, and he grumbles as he’s forced to reach for one of the few readily-available options: a jar of pickles. (Betty had forbidden him from buying any microwavable dinners during their last grocery run, and now he’s really regretting not getting a few behind her back anyway.)

He’s just about to dig into the jar with a fork and hope that it’ll catch onto one of the few pickles left when Betty wanders into the kitchen, hands rubbing tiredly at her eyes. She’s caught him, a kid with his hands in the cookie jar, but she doesn’t seem mad. More disappointed in him than anything else really. 

For some reason, that’s almost worse.

“Pickles at three a.m.?” she chuckles, walking up to the kitchen sink to wash her hands before reaching for a dish towel to dry them off.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he grumbles, but now his fork’s on the counter, pickle-less, and the jar’s a foot away from him. He may be a self-appointed loser, but he’s not  _ shameless _ .

“Ah, well then how ‘bout we send you back to bed with a bit more in your stomach than a few garlic pickles.” She spins, stands on her tip-toes to open the tallest cabinet they’ve got, her t-shirt hem lifting above the waistband of her shorts in a way that makes him blush and turn away, and pulls out a few baking trays. “Gingerbread?” she asks, already searching through their pantry for flour, baking soda, and any other ingredients he imagines she’ll need. 

He knows he shouldn’t force her to stay up with him, should probably just tell her to go back to bed and not worry, but he’s a  _ selfish _ loser, so he doesn’t.

She bakes, he watches, helping out whenever she needs him to stir the second batch while she checks on the first that’s already baking away in the oven. (He’s well aware that she’s thrown raw eggs into the mixture, but he’ll take the chances of catching salmonella any day if it means getting to eat some of Betty’s raw cookie dough.)

The lack of sleep slowly gets to the both of them, with Betty nearly falling asleep at the counter while waiting for the first batch to cool and with him  _ actually _ falling asleep.

He wakes again to find that Betty’s hauled him over to the couch somehow, and the microwave’s analog clock tells him it’s nearly eight a.m. She’s also fallen asleep, draped over the armchair next to him and letting out the occasional mutter. Her nose wrinkles at the sound of the doorbell, and Jughead sighs as he opens the door to reveal a disheveled Dilton Doiley standing on their front step, just as he had for the past week.

“Package for—”

“Jones, yeah, I know,” he grumbles, taking it out of the man’s hands and shutting the door behind him.

“What’d you get today, Juggie?” Betty yawns, and his heart hammers in his chest at the childhood nickname. Must be the sleep deprivation playing tricks on him _ ,  _ he thinks, shaking his head to clear his mind.

He unwraps the present to reveal a circular wooden ornament, the constellation of Ursa Minor engraved into its center.

“Oh, Ursa Minor,” Betty gasps beside him, fingers reaching out to trace over the pattern of stars. “Do you remember, Juggie? When you taught me how to find it?”

“Polaris,” he recites the line he most definitely remembers telling her, back when they would camp out under the stars in Archie’s backyard on summer nights.

“It’ll always take you home,” she breathes.

What a load of bullshit that had been. He almost wants to laugh at the ridiculous statement, but the sparkle in Betty’s eyes stops him.

She still believes in it, he realizes, and who’s he to stomp on that?

~~~

Dilton drops off a bouquet of light pink wildflowers the next morning, and Jughead sets about finding a vase for them around the apartment. He’s sure he’s seen them before, but he can’t recall where, or why, or even what they’re called. 

Betty would know, but she’d left for Riverdale the night before, off to spend the next few days with Polly for the twins’ birthday. She’s only been gone a few hours, really, but an ache in his chest won’t go away, and he knows that it’s because he misses her already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed that.
> 
> Please leave any questions, comments, concerns, or reviews below.
> 
> I'd especially love to hear any theories about the clues, or whether or not you think Jug will solve the mystery in time for Christmas. Let me know your thoughts!
> 
> <3


	3. Umbrellas, Gulls, and a Herring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Polly's a recluse in the woods, the twins are masterful trolls, and Alice can choke. So, basically, just a simple extension of canon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I'm back with yet another chapter, beta'd as always by the incredible @redundantoxymorons.
> 
> This one isn't as happy-go-lucky as the other two, but I hope you still really enjoy it. <3

Polly picks her up at the station, blonde hair whipping behind her in the chilly wind as she waves Betty over. It almost looks silver under the harsh lighting of the parking lot and the glare of the moon.

“Betty!” she greets, rushing over from where she’s left the car running, door swung wide open. Betty nearly rolls her eyes at her sister’s carelessness—she’d always reveled in the safety of their little ghost town, apparently enough so that basic street smarts like  _ don’t leave your car running and unattended _ had seemed unnecessary to her. It’s no wonder she’s never bothered to leave.

“Hey, Pol,” she grins, dropping the duffel bag at her shoulder to embrace her sister at the top of the steps to the platform. They’ve been here before. It’s the reverse every time she leaves, and the same every time she comes back: wrap your arms around her, smell the faint scent of peaches that she seems to bathe in, and never let go. Until, of course, you have to. You always have to let go.

Her sister pulls back, hands still gripping Betty’s shoulders tightly, and gives her a quick once-over. “You look,” she trails off, visibly struggling to find her words.

“The same as always? Exhausted?” Betty ventures, sighing. Polly, on the other hand, is as youthful as ever, the wrinkles around her eyes seeming to highlight the sparkle behind them, more than anything else. 

Polly frowns, her lips drawing together tightly, and Betty suddenly feels compelled to apologize. “I was going to say  _ happy _ , Betty, but I stand corrected. Something’s got you down, I see that now. What’d Mom do this time?”

“Mom?” Betty asks, incredulous. “No, uh, I haven’t heard from Mom in a few weeks, actually. Ever since Jug and I got rid of our landline.”

“What about your cell?” Polly asks knowingly, reaching down to pick up Betty’s bag for her as they start down the stairs for her car.

“I may or may not be ignoring her,” Betty mutters sheepishly, then raises her voice in defense, “At least I haven’t blocked her yet—don’t look at me like that.”

Polly chuckles, drops the bag off in the backseat, then settles into the car herself. “Whatever you say, Betty. As long as you’re not fighting with her, then we’re good.” She shifts out of park while Betty buckles herself in, headlights flashing as she weaves her way around to the lot’s exit and onto the road. Her fingers tap nervously on the steering wheel as they wait for the light, nails long and manicured as always, and Betty feels her stomach clench before the thought registers.

Oh, no. “Polly,” she starts stubbornly, and hears her sister sigh next to her. “You didn’t.”

“I just thought, you know, the twins should get to see all of their family on their birthday. Grandma Alice is part of that, no matter how hard you keep trying to cut her out. She’s always been there, Betty,” Polly argues, turning the car past Pop’s and out towards Sweetwater River.

Betty’s glad that her sister and Jason had chosen to live in a small little cabin out of town and not down the road from their families. She’s not sure she could stand driving down Elm tonight, past the house with the red front door and childhood memories.

“She was never there the right way, Polly, and you know that. You want her around to help with the twins, to mend relationships that she purposely broke all those years ago, fine. You always were the better one out of the both of us. But I don’t want any part of it.” Her arms are crossed, her lips are pursed in the signature Betty Cooper pout, and she refuses to look back at her sister, instead gazing out at the tree line that rushes past them as they move along the winding road. She knows she sounds like a child—as unreasonable as one of the twins when their mother sends them to bed a few minutes early—but she can’t bring herself to care. She’d left, she’d gotten out from the town with all of its expectations and judgements, but her mother’s presence had never loomed too far behind, always drawing her back, until she’d cut her off completely. And Betty Cooper’s not letting herself fall back into that trap ever again.

Polly’s quiet now, silently turning from one lane to the next until they arrive at her driveway in the middle of the woods, and then the car stops, and neither one of them moves. Polly breaks first.

“I know she was always harder on you, Betty. I wasn’t around enough to see it when we were younger, and I’ll always be sorry about that—

“Don’t apologize,” Betty interrupts, shaking her head quickly.  _ Always being sorry _ , she adds to that list of Cooper habits.

Polly waves her off. “But she’s learned. She’s so good with the twins, Betty, really.” 

Her sister looks so sincere, biting at her lip and pleading with her to glue the last piece of the broken Cooper vase back together with the rest. But she can’t go back. She isn’t like Polly, can’t forget that easily, and so she shakes her head lightly in response, hand dropping to rest on her sister’s in reassurance. “No, Pol,” she breathes, “but I’ll try my best to get along. Just for the next few days—just for you, and the twins.”

A smile finally breaks across Polly’s pale complexion, as bright and joyous as ever, and she pulls Betty back into a hug across the center console.

_ Peaches _ , Betty thinks, as she wraps her arms tighter around her sister.

~~~

She hadn’t heard from anyone all Sunday, her phone sitting silently on the end table by the pull-out couch Polly had prepared for her to sleep on. She spends the day scouring the woods for a Yeti with the twins, and then building an igloo fort once they’d given up on that endeavor.

It had been nice to get away from the city for a change, to wake up to the smell of maple wood instead of burnt coffee and whatever it was that seemed to permeate incessantly from certain sewers.

Archie’s overseeing their operation while she’s gone, and he’s definitely capable of it on his own—he is—but she decides to call him come Monday morning anyway. Just to check in. 

“Betty, you wouldn’t believe how freaking lucky we are,” he shouts into the phone after a few rings.

“Oh God, Arch,” she whines quietly. “What now? I’ve only been gone for twenty-four hours and there’s already—”

“No, no, it’s good, I promise. Well, first of all, I mean, the dude is dying, Betty. Just paranoid as hell. The pizza delivery guy knocked on the door while I was over last night and Jug nearly jumped out of his skin. He’s surprisingly easy to intimidate for a cop—who knew gifts would be the thing to get him. Right? I mean,”

“Archie,” she interrupts impatiently, running a finger lightly along the windowsill she’s sat in front of in Polly’s kitchen, looking out over the frozen river. “Why are we lucky?”

“Oh,” he stops rambling, and she can almost hear the gears grinding as he tries to think back to what he’d originally meant to say. “Oh! We’re lucky because it’s raining out.”

_ It’s raining out _ , she mumbles to herself while watching Juniper attempt to skate across the frozen ice in her snow boots. Her arms flail around her as she tries to stay upright, Dagwood encouraging her from his position on the other side.

“—so he actually got to use the gift, you know, which I think makes it all that much better. Imagine how much more spooked he is now compared to when I left him in front of your TV last night?”

The umbrella, she now remembers, is today’s gift. Partly because he never used one, and she’d been wanting to actually get him one for a while now, but also because of the U at the beginning. It worked perfectly for December 10th, a day that just so happened to also be rainy, though they couldn’t have planned that out so many days in advance. It was just their luck that the gift seemed perfectly timed for the day, probably even a little creepy to an already-paranoid police detective, and definitely not the declaration of love it was meant to be.

God, she feels terrible for making him feel that way, especially around the holidays, but it was time he figured it out, anyway. The angel would be arriving in a few days, the magpie a few after that, and then the secret would be good and out. Until then, she’d enjoy herself.

Archie’s still going by the time she focuses back in on their conversation, and she’s about to interrupt him once again when Jughead saves her the effort; “Hey, Arch? Jug’s calling, so I’m going to have to pick up. You never know what he might need. Possibly instructions on how to use an umbrella. I’ll call you back later, alright?”

“Sure, Betty,” she hears him chirp from the other end before switching calls.

“I’ve barely been gone for more than a day. Miss me already?” she jokes, taking a sip from the mug of scalding tea set on the kitchen table in front of her.

“No,” he mutters, and it’s so defensive she has to laugh. A tiny part of her, though, revels in the fact that maybe, just maybe, he does. “I’m actually calling because I’ve got some great news, possibly a breakthrough.”

“Uh huh,” she encourages, seemingly uninterested but with her heart pounding increasingly louder in her ears.

“The bouquet of flowers I got yesterday, they’re Joe-Pye Weeds. Ethel saw them in the vase on my desk this morning and figured it out.”

Ethel. Betty rolls the name around on her tongue. Ethel? She remembers Jug mentioning her in passing once or twice before. Ethel.

The mailroom lady?

“Veronica thinks it’s her now. I guess it makes sense: the owl, the fox, the pine tree—” (Betty wants to tell him it’s a blue spruce, actually, exactly like the one in their living room, but she keeps her mouth shut) “—the oak leaf and now this? Some random wildflower nobody’s ever heard of? It’s got to be her.”

“Right, and why would all the nature be connected to her?” Betty asks, quietly. She looks back outside, where Juniper and Dagwood are now practicing their pirouettes on the ice, and shakes her head clear. It was getting way too foggy, too fuzzy around the edges, for her liking.

“She’s part of some environmental club, always wearing shirts with little cartoon prints and shit like ‘save the bees’, I don’t know. I don’t really pay attention. I just know that it’s pretty rare to find someone who can immediately tell a pink wildflower apart from another.”

_ I can _ , her mind answers immediately, quietly as the avalanche of fog returns, bringing memories with it. Memories of another boy and girl out on that river, their redheaded friend drifting in his raft a little further downstream as they admire the summer flowers blossoming around them. The tallest of them all, a pink-petaled, long-stemmed plant, catches the little girl’s attention immediately, and she points it out to her best friend as the river carries them along.

She’ll later learn from a library book that those flowers aren’t flowers at all. They’re weeds. Joe-Pye weeds.

Then Dagwood falls on the ice, most definitely bruising his hip and the palm of his hand, and her gasp at his injury must carry through the phone because Jughead’s stern, “What’s going on?” comes back in response.

“Dagwood’s just, nothing, anyway, I’ve got to go help him up, Juggie,” she replies as she stands and makes for the entrance hall to grab her coat. “See you tomorrow, and, uh, don’t get into any trouble until I get back.”

She’s slipping her snow shoes on when Polly pops up behind her, already dressed for the weather as she shuffles around Betty to open the front door. She steps outside, turns, and gives out a loud laugh when Betty shoots her a look that says,  _ Why haven’t you run to help your kid out on the ice yet? _

“Oh come on, Betty, Dag’s big enough to deal with a few bruises on his own by now. I’m just out here enjoying the snow; maybe I’ll even go for a skate myself. You coming?”

Later, when the two sisters are hunkered down behind yesterday’s igloo fort to defend themselves from the snowballs being launched their way, Polly turns to her, a knowing grin plastered on her face. “Who was that on the phone earlier?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Betty responds, flinching when a snowball very nearly makes it over the wall of their fort and on to her face.

“It’s been years, Betty,” her sister sighs now, digging for more snow to pack into ammunition of their own. “You should go for it, once and for all.”

Betty barely looks up from her own handiwork and breathes out a sigh. “Working on it, Pols.”

Juniper’s snowball proceeds to smack her right in the forehead, and the twins cheer as her ears ring. The fog comes back.

~~~

Betty’s set to leave for the city as soon as the twins’ birthday party’s all cleaned up and put to rest, and yet time seems to be moving slower than ever. 

For all of Polly and Jason’s limited spending (considering their literal log cabin and the years old Toyota SUV her sister drives), they’ve gone all out for the twins, renting Pop’s out for the evening and decorating each and every booth to the nines. Every table’s got a Spongebob-themed centerpiece, surrounded by plates and plates of burgers, fries, and more. Not to mention the unlimited milkshakes that are constantly flowing out of Pop’s kitchen, only to get left behind, still half-full, on a counter or table or seat.

The karaoke machine in the back won’t stop playing Baby Shark, because Betty’s one-hundred percent sure that her niece and nephew are masterminds at trolling and not just  _ really into the song, Betty. _

She’s going to go insane.

To top it all off, her mother’s been shooting withering glares at her from her seat in the booth closest to the front door, always monitoring and recording. According to Polly, she’s the photographer for the event, but it seems to Betty like any “photographer” still using their phone as a camera is just a fraud with ulterior motives.

Her father, on the other hand, sits passively at his wife’s side, slowly chewing away at his burger as if he’s just eating dinner while watching a football game he’s not particularly interested in. The more she thinks about it, the more her face heats up, and yeah, she’s officially gone insane.

She grabs her duffel bag, gives Polly one of their signature hugs, and wishes her niece and nephew a wonderful birthday over the noise of Baby Shark and six-year-olds playing tag in a restaurant before heading for the door.

“Leaving already I see, Elizabeth,” her mother stops her as her fingers reach the doorknob. “Will you be back for Christmas then?”

She turns, looks her mother dead in the eye. “No.”

She can hear her mother call after her as she steps out the door, her father voiceless as always. Her Uber to the train station manages to pick her up right as she steps foot on the sidewalk off of Pop’s lot, and she arrives just in time to catch the 5:16 train back into the city.

She sleeps on the train, fleeting thoughts passing just as fast as the wind rushing by the window pane, except one manages to stick, to get caught on the many jagged edges of her mind. When she thinks back on it on her trek to the apartment, her heart thunders in her chest. She won’t be spending her Christmas in that little ghost town this year, but she’ll finally be spending it at home.

~~~

Jughead’s asleep on the couch when she bustles into the dark apartment, still dressed and disheveled, almost as if he’d fallen asleep while waiting up for her. Her heart pounds even faster.

“Hey, Jug,” she greets quietly, walking over to settle a hand over his shoulder and gently shake him awake. 

“Wha-?” he grumbles, stretching out before shooting up straight, startled and suddenly alert. “Oh God, Betts, it’s just you,” he sighs, hand over his heart as his breathing evens out again. “I was just, um, watching a movie,” comes his explanation, complete with a hand wave towards the tv, displaying the Netflix “Are you still watching?” screen.

Her heart drops a bit lower in her chest, and the laugh bubbling up in her throat ends up coming out a short chuckle. “Mind if I join you?” she asks, not willing to wait for a response before pushing him over on the couch and falling back onto it herself. Her joints ache, and her forehead is throbbing from all the snowball attacks, but she’s content to sit and watch whatever Hitchcock movie he’s surely halfway through.

She recognizes it as Psycho, and her eyes begin to flutter shut as Marion slowly eats away at her toast. Slowly, so slowly, until the camera pans to Norman and the owl behind him, and then it all fades to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...spoiler city, am I right? I threw a few clues about Betty's game out there for you all, and I'm super excited to see if anyone catches them.
> 
> Please leave any theories, questions, comments, concerns, or reviews below. I love hearing from you.
> 
> <3


	4. Elves, Angels, Diaries, and Jokers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re an idiot, Jones.”
> 
> Or
> 
> Veronica figures out a key piece of the puzzle, and Jughead has yet to figure out his feelings. He's getting there, though, however slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that it's past Christmas, and past New Year's too, but here I am, offering you this chapter anyway. I hope you still enjoy it!

Tuesday’s seagull and Wednesday’s herring ornaments had brought him back to Ethel, but the next two presents have him confused. They’re both so… festive, for lack of a better term, and not entirely correlated to the hunch he and Veronica have had since the Joe-Pye weeds. 

The elf is especially unnerving, its dark beady eyes following him around the living room from the spot on the windowsill that Betty had insisted they keep him on. She’d also insisted they call him their elf-on-the-window-shelf, but he’d put his foot down on that one.

The angel ornament, he decides, looks rather beautiful hanging from their tree—with her golden hair and bright green eyes—but Veronica won’t stop staring her down from across the room.

“What’d the literal angel do to you now, Ronnie?” he asks, exasperated, from his seat across from her at the kitchen table. Dozens of reports lay before them, dates and names all highlighted and circled as they try to connect a string of burglaries around the Upper West Side back to the criminal they’d nicknamed the Gargoyle King. (Naming anyone a king these days always sounded overly theatric to him, but Veronica had won their bet, and so she’d gotten her pick.)

“She didn’t do anything,” she huffs, foot tapping impatiently against the ground as she continues to eye the ornament, “but there’s something about her.” She circles around the table, clacks her heels all the way over to the tree, and nearly rips the angel off the branch it hangs from.

“Easy, easy, you’re tampering with the evidence, Ron,” he scolds, continuing to vaguely scan through pages and pages of reports from the date of August 13th.

“Would you relax, Frodo?” She drops herself onto the couch dramatically, the ornament still clutched in her fingers, and skims a thumb over the sash that runs across the angel’s white gown. Veronica frowns as she reads the words etched into the sash aloud: “The magic of beginnings.”

Jughead grumbles, circling yet another unusual name (Papa P) on a report in red ink. “You sure that isn’t just the tagline to another one of those appalling Hallmark movies you love so much?”

“I’ll have you know that holiday romcoms are masterpieces worthy of far more praise than whatever sci-fi, action, or fantasy movie all the nerds are currently obsessing over,” Veronica retorts, and Jughead stays silent at that—she’s not entirely wrong. “To answer your question, however, no it isn’t just a cheesy line from some poorly written feel-good film. There’s got to be something more to it, I’m sure.”

“Right, but until you figure it out, would you mind helping me do some background research on the Poutines?”

She snaps her neck to turn to him, an eyebrow now raised. “The Poutines? That Canadian mafia group attending tomorrow’s charity gala?”

“Those are the ones,” he affirms, nodding. “I just found a ‘Papa P’ on here, and I think he might be connected to them somehow.”

Realization dawns on her, her second eyebrow now raising to match the first, and Veronica scrambles over to the table from the couch. She opens up her laptop, intent on discovering as much as she can about the Poutines before they run security at the gala tomorrow night, and the angel falls back against the couch pillow, forgotten.

The sound of the fridge door slamming draws Jughead’s attention away from the reports on Papa P that he and Veronica found on the NYPD database, and he looks up to realize just how much he’d lost track of time in their endeavors. Betty’s wearing a glittery green dress, one that sparkles in the same way her eyes do, and Jughead can feel his jaw drop.

“Going somewhere, gorgeous?” Veronica smirks, adjusting the reading glasses perched on her nose as if to get a better view.

Betty chuckles, setting the bottle of sparkling water that she’d pulled from the fridge onto the counter, and spins in place; the short dress glistens brilliantly under the shifting light. “You like it?” she asks, as if Jughead’s flaming cheeks aren’t evidence enough. “Kev’s art show is tonight.”

Kev’s art show— _ wasn’t he supposed to go to that? _

“Shit,” he sighs, looking down at the uniform he still hadn’t changed out of. “What time’s that at again?”

Betty slinks over to the table, lays a reaffirming hand on his shoulder, and bends down to breathe out her words by his ear. “No worries, Juggie, I figured you’d be busy. Archie’s taking me instead.” She straightens back up, then tugs at her dress.

A knock on the door has her grin widening. “That must be him. See you later, Jug, Ronnie.”

The front door slams behind her, and Jughead winces at the noise. “You’re an idiot, Jones,” Veronica scoffs, and he has to agree.

~~~

He’s got his hands full with two lattes and a bag of bagels from the coffee shop on Greenwhich Ave when Veronica calls him the next morning, and Jughead lets it ring until he reaches the entrance to Washington Square Park, an empty bench calling his name.

“Jughead,” she barks into the phone when he calls her back. “I figured it out. That little angel and her sash—that’s the biggest clue yet.”

He runs a lazy hand over his face as yet another yawn hits, the result of too little sleep the night before. Not only had he run through every possible scenario in which their mission could go incredibly wrong, but he’d also stayed up thinking far too much about the blonde sleeping in the room next to his, Veronica’s “You’re an idiot, Jones,” on repeat in his mind.

“It’s the beginning of each clue,” she screeches loudly, words rushing together with excitement. “Like an acrostic poem, you know? Hell, you’re the literary bullshit lover, I’m surprised you weren’t the one to figure it out first.”

“You think,” he pauses, trying to run through the clues in his mind. “You think they spell something out?”

“I don’t think, I know. I knew that little angel had something to her, and now I’ve figured it out. Another point for Lodge.” She pauses, and Jughead can hear her rummaging through the drawer of her entrance table for her keys. “I’ll be at yours in fifteen, and I expect every single ornament lined up in the order they arrived by the time I’m there, got it?”

“Sure, Ron,” he sighs, stuffing his phone into his pocket and picking up his and Betty’s breakfast from the bench.  _ An acrostic poem _ , he laughs to himself—she had to be joking.

~~~

Veronica sports a triumphant grin as she scans over the row of ornaments lined up on the kitchen counter. Jughead, on the other hand, still has a disbelieving eyebrow raised.

“Alright, the first one’s easy,” she starts, pulling a pen out of the bun in her hair to write ‘Icicle’ on the post-it note in front of the ornament. “I for icicle, but also a one for the first day,” she notes, pointing to the little ‘l’ etched into its side.

“If it’s spelling out a word that starts with an I, then that’s a pretty good place to start. There aren’t all that many words to pick from,” Jughead notes, approaching the presents himself.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jughead Jones,” Veronica comments, tapping the pen to her temple knowingly. “It’s not one long word, but many. And the first one is I. The second one starts with either F.” She scratches the letter onto the piece of paper. “Or L, for fairy lights or just lights, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Jughead snarks, shaking his head. There’s no way they’ll get any kind of secret message from this exercise, not when there are so many different words to describe the objects before them. “Veronica, don’t you think we should be spending our time getting ready for the gala instead?”

“Hush, Jones.” She continues moving down the line, writing down letters one by one. “F for fox, T for tree,” she mumbles, then stops. “What the hell is this?”

He peers around her to find an empty dish. “Ah, that would be the yule log cake. Betty ate it all, unfortunately.” He winces when Veronica whirls around sharply.

“You let her eat the cake? You really are an idiot.” She doesn’t spare him another glance and returns to her work. “Seagulls or gulls, do you think?” she finally asks towards the tail end of the line. He has no idea, and tells her as much.

“You’re absolutely useless, Jughead Jones,” she sighs, picking up all of the post-its and laying them out in order on the table. “I fofty…” she trails off. “No, that can’t be right. “If, ofty—no.”

“Try evergreen instead of tree,” he comments over her shoulder. “And separate the Y from the rest of the word.”

“I fofe y— Fofe isn’t a word, and neither is lofe, if we go with ‘lights’ instead of ‘fairy lights’ for the second day.”

“Lofe”, he mumbles, letting the word tumble around on his tongue. It’s not a fox.  _ It’s not a fox _ . “It’s a vixen,” he tells Veronica, ”Love. The word is love.”

Her grin wides at the revelation, and she scribbles a V right next to the F on the vixen’s post-it. “Maybe you’re not so useless, after all.”

“I try.”

She turns back to the letters before her and reads them out slowly. “I love you Jushea.”

His throat closes up at the words, air getting trapped in his lungs, and he chokes out a chuckle. “Either someone seriously misspelled Joshua, or those are gulls and we’ve yet to get the ornament for D.”

“Holy shit, Jones,” Veronica breathes out, speechless for once.

“It’s got to be a joke, Veronica.” There’s no way anyone in the world would go to this much trouble just to proclaim their love for Jughead Jones. No way at all.

“I don’t think so. It’s just a grand gesture, that’s all—you said it yourself, this person knows you well. They know you like mysteries, they know you like finding clues, and they’re feeding right into that. It’s like a scavenger hunt prom-posal, but on a whole different level.” The more she talks, the more she works herself up, and Jughead can tell she’s excited by the new development in their case. It’s yet another reason for her to make fun of him for all eternity, especially considering that she’d been the one to crack most of it.

“Besides, now we know that it’s definitely not anything to be paranoid about. Just a profession of love, that’s all.” She pauses, her eyes shining brighter as she catches them on his, mischief swimming behind them. Then she frowns, and lowers her voice, “You know, unless you’ve got a stalker.”

He groans, anxiety running through his veins all over again. “God, Veronica.”

Her laugh echoes through the room even after she leaves to change into tonight’s outfit.

~~~

Jughead’s driving Veronica’s limo to the gala, dressed as her driver for the night, while she curls her lashes again in the back of the car. Her platinum blonde wig always startles him when he catches her reflection in the rear view mirror, but then he remembers that he’s dealing with Monica Posh tonight, and not Veronica Lodge, and his heart rate slows back down. They’ve done this plenty of times before, with Monica Posh becoming a highly secretive celebrity in her own right, but the wig has never managed to grow on him as much as the rest of the extravagant costume.

“I know that tomorrow’s is supposed to start with a D, but what do you think’ll come after that? Maybe someone will finally show up at your doorstep with a yule log tiramisu recipe and a bouquet of Joe-Pye weeds, or maybe you’ll have to send the call out yourself. You know, like Prince Charming in Cinderella? Oh, this is so exciting,” she gushes, and Jughead chuckles.

“Don’t get too excited, Monica, or that wig’ll come right off.”

“Funny, Jones,” she snaps back, but he still catches her reaching up to adjust it.

“Anytime,” he responds, pulling up to the curb to let her out and onto the carpet walkway that leads inside. She simply nods in response before turning to pose for the onslaught of cameras, and Jughead drives off.

“Poutines pulling up,” he mumbles into the connected bluetooth earpiece as he drives by them on his way to the parking lot, ready in case she needs backup. She normally doesn’t, but one could never be too sure.

“Not a single auction item’s getting smuggled past security tonight, “ she assures on the other end, and Jughead believes her.

~~~

The diary arrives the next day. It’s tiny, almost as if the angel could write in it herself. He flips through its few pages over and over again throughout the day, right up until he falls asleep that night. No matter how many times he does, he comes up empty. No hints, no writings, no drawings to be found.

He hopes tomorrow brings some clarity, perhaps the final reveal, but it doesn’t. Eight a.m. on Sunday morning brings, instead, a card straight from a deck of 52. A joker.

It almost laughs at him, sneers at him, and Jughead realizes that whatever game they’re playing, it’s far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave any questions, comments, concerns, theories, or reviews down below. I love hearing your thoughts.
> 
> Also, what do we think of the joker? I'd love to hear any theories on Betty's endgame, now that part of the plan has been revealed.
> 
> As always, you can find me over on tumblr @writeraquamarinara. It's a dumpster fire of a blog, but it's my fun and friendly dumpster fire, so I hope you'll come join. Much love <3


	5. Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, Nutcrackers, Elsters, and Skis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Then you’d better hurry up and crack the case soon, Jones. Those cookies are on borrowed time.” Betty turns back to her pancake batter, the corners of her lips twitching silently upwards. _And so are you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, it's pretty much way past Christmas by now, but here I am anyway with the fifth chapter of this little ficlet. I hope you enjoy it!

Betty’s arm slows as she mixes the pancake batter, the wooden spoon falling to the countertop when she moves to pull the cardigan off of her shoulders. She’s hot, and her arms already ache from holding Kevin up on their walk home from the bar last night. More than anything, really, she’s tired. Friday’s night out after one of the longest weeks of the year had been more than enough social interaction for her, but then Archie had dragged her out to see his and Val’s gig on Saturday, and Kevin had insisted on stopping by the bar the night after that. How could she say no?

“Morning,” Jughead greets sheepishly as he enters the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I’m really sorry that I couldn’t come out this weekend, especially Friday.”

She shoots him a small smile and waves her hand lightly. “You had work, and crime never sleeps,” she answers, repeating his oft-used excuses right back to him. Really, though, she hadn’t minded his absence. Sure, she’d have loved to spend her nights with him, but watching Archie’s face scrunch up in confusion at every piece of modern art they saw had more than made up for all of it.

She turns back to her pancake batter, but not before catching the grimace that appears on his face at her words. It turns to a deep frown, she imagines, when the doorbell rings a few minutes later.

The sound of wicker slipping against marble tells her that he’s set the basket down on the counter, and the grumble that slips from his lips tells her that he’s uncovered it.

“God, oatmeal raisin? I know that they needed something for O, but really?”

She whirls around, spoon in hand and tongue in cheek.  _ So, he’s got that part figured out. _ “Hey! I happen to love oatmeal raisin cookies.”  _ Excellent. _

“I know you do, Betts. They were all you baked for two years of high school, and only because I wouldn’t eat half the batch before we got to the bake sale.” 

“Exactly, now pass ‘em over if you aren’t going to eat them. I’m starving, and way too tired to finish these pancakes up before work.”

“Hey,” he protests, pulling them from her grasp right as her fingers graze the basket. “These are a clue, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in all these years it’s that you never eat the evidence.”

“Then you’d better hurry up and crack the case soon, Jones. Those cookies are on borrowed time.” Betty turns back to her pancake batter, the corners of her lips twitching silently upwards.  _ And so are you. _

~~~

A wooden nutcracker painted in shades of gold and red sits in his pocket as Jughead skims through the pages of an Agatha Christie. His legs lay one over the other on the small desk in front of his foldable chair, his eyes focused on the words in front of him as he reads passages again and again without comprehension.

The ornament has been distracting him far less than he thought it would—it’s just another letter in his last name, and doesn’t seem to have any connection to past hints.

For once, the ornament isn’t what’s causing his brain to short-circuit this morning, and for that he’d normally be thankful, but the voice grating away in his ear has him in a horribly foul mood. It’s squeaky, mousy, and Jughead watches Sweet Pea jump out of the corner of his eye at every high-pitched rasp that comes through their earpieces. 

They’re stationed in the tiniest motel room Jughead’s ever seen, a small camera recording everyone coming in and out of the backdoor to the yogurt plant across the street. Sweet Pea sits on the windowsill next to the camera as it’s his turn to watch for any rushed activity, his fingers nervous as they fiddle with the zipper of his jacket.

Jughead lets Veronica’s side of the stream continue to filter in, but mutes his and Sweet Pea’s ends. “What’s up, P?” he asks, eyebrow raised as he shoves a receipt for chips from the gas station down the block into his book as a placeholder.

“You don’t think we’re going too far, sending her in there? What if they steal her cash and bolt? What if they steal  _ her _ and bolt?” He’s whispering but still agitated by his thoughts, and Jughead lays a reassuring hand on his denim-clad knee.

They’d sent Monica Posh to the Poutine stronghold—a yogurt factory north of the city and right off the Hudson—to buy the diamonds that they had been selling off from the necklace they’d won at this weekend’s auction. There was nothing inherently wrong with that—the necklace was theirs, after all, but Jughead suspected that a lot more than just a few diamonds were stashed away in that factory, and Veronica had volunteered herself up as bait. He’d been nervous to send her in at first, and Captain Keller had been even more hesitant about their mission, but Veronica had reassured them that the safety measures she had planned would be foolproof.

She’s got a couple thousand and two cans of pepper spray in her designer purse, a taser tucked into her waistband, and a gun strapped to her thigh, and she’s more than capable of decimating a gang of men with only one of those weapons on a bad day. To add to that, Keller had insisted that Jughead and Sweet Pea trail her, hiding away in the motel across the street until Veronica gave them the signal of an impending arrest, and then they’d run out to secure all of the building’s back exits. Foolproof.

“There’s nothing to be worried about—she’s got this,” he reassures his friend as the Poutine’s seller continues to blabber into their ears. Jughead wishes Veronica would just shut him up already.

(“As you can see, Miss Monica, they’re perfectly cut round brilliants, all vivid reds. See the way the light sparkles?”

“That’s Ms. Posh, to you.”)

“No, I know, but what if they sniff her out? What if it’s a trap?” Sweet Pea’s face crumbles, and Jughead’s heart hurts for the guy. He can’t imagine what he’d do if anything bad happened to Veronica—he’s considered her one of his best friends and partners since forever—but if anything happened to Betty, well. Jughead doesn’t even want to think about it. He shakes his head clear of the thought.

“Have you told her yet? About how you feel?”

Sweet Pea mumbles, the sounds barely dripping from his tongue and mixing with Veronica’s practiced “I’m going to need to see something much better than this manhandled disaster of a diamond. Any blue diamond rings? Or perhaps a Cullivan? I’ve been looking all over for one of those. Otherwise, there is no transaction to be made today, I’m afraid.”

“Of course, right this way, Miss,” comes the grainy response.

“She’d laugh in my face, Jug,” Sweet Pea finally answers, more vulnerable than Jughead’s ever seen him.

Jughead just chuckles, his eyes dragging to a shipment truck that’s just docked at the unloading deck across the street. “You obviously don’t know her as well as you think then, Sweets. She’s feisty, independent, sure, but not pure evil. And she’s sure as hell got eyes. I’d say go for it, man. But first,” he holds up a finger, pointing to the commotion outside their window.

“I apologize,” Veronica starts, and there’s their signal.

“You take the Northwest exit, I’ve got the east deck,” Jughead orders, and the two men slip out of their rooms and down the motel stairs to reach their positions before Veronica begins taking down a few gang members.

Jughead’s baton swipes at the shins of an escapee running blindly out the door a few minutes later, and Jughead’s got the man—Carl Martin—in handcuffs seconds after that. He meets Sweet Pea and his own captive, a man he recognizes as Lenny Kowalski, out in front, with Veronica trailing shortly behind, a string of gang members and triumphant grin with her.

“You’ve all got the right to remain silent,” she announces, not a piece of platinum hair out of place, and Jughead turns to catch Sweet Pea watching her with his heart in his eyes.

Toni pulls up with a few squad cars seconds later, shoves their perps in the back seats, and orders Sweet Pea to wipe the dopey grin off his face. He does, cheeks flushing, until Veronica approaches. “I thought you looked cute,” she admits with a smile, and then his entire face turns red. Jughead just nods, shoots him a look.  _ I told you so. _

If it wasn’t for the nutcracker currently burning a whole into his pocket, Jughead might even call himself a pretty smart guy.

~~~

“Hello?” Betty answers her phone hastily, its ringing breaking the peaceful silence of the last few minutes of her lunch break.

“Betty Cooper?” comes a stern voice, and Betty would recognize it anywhere. She bites her lip, wary of what’s to follow.

“Hey, Veronica. What’s up?”

“ _ What’s up? _ ” the other girl nearly screeches. Betty winces. “What’s up is that you’re a goddamn genius, that’s what.”

“Excuse me?” Betty counters, both taken aback by the unexpected statement and already cluing into why Veronica’s calling her—a rare occasion, unless she needs someone to help her out with her next prank on Jughead.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. This whole thing, it’s all you!”

Her bottom lip is nearly raw at this point, and Betty’s at a loss for words. She stabs at the remaining croutons in her salad, breaking them apart with her fork. “I, um, well.” She might as well come out with it. “Yeah, it’s me. I hope you’re not mad or anything.”

“Mad?!” Veronica screeches again, and Betty pulls the phone away from her ear, glad that everyone else has already left the break room and can’t overhear their conversation. “Betty, you’re a genius. I mean, a prank and a profession of love, all in one? What dreams are made of. If you weren’t so hung up on Torombolo over there, I might even ask you out myself.”

A breath pushes its way out of Betty’s lungs, the weight of guilt finally lifted off her shoulders, and she smiles slightly at that. “Unfortunately, it seems I’ve got it pretty bad for your Torombolo.”

“Oh, I know—you poor thing—but he doesn’t, and I think it’s high time we let him figure it out for himself, don’t you? I’ll step away from the investigation, maybe even finally help Toni find a suit for her and Cheryl’s wedding. She’s been asking for my fashion advice for ages now. It’d probably end up being more of a fashion overhaul than anything else, if you get what I mean.” Betty quickly checks the clock above the break room door and silently thanks Father Time for getting her out of yet another unstoppable ramble today. “But she’d come out all the better at the end of it, trust me.”

“Oh, I do trust you, absolutely,” Betty interrupts when she sees her chance, “but I’ve really got to get back to work, Veronica. Good luck with the suit shopping, and, uh, thanks for the help with Jug. I really appreciate it.”

“Of course, Betty dear, anytime.”

Betty sets her phone down on the table, packs the remnants of her lunch back up, and sits back in her chair until Kevin comes calling with a reminder for whatever meeting she’s got scheduled in the next few minutes. She’d planned for everything, or so she’d thought—Veronica’s friendship hadn’t been factored into the equation, but sometimes, and only sometimes, life managed to surprise her in the most wonderful of ways.

~~~

The nutcracker sits on the counter at home, lined up after the empty basket of oatmeal cookies (damn it, Betty), while today’s ornament—a small magpie bird—takes its place in Jughead’s pocket.

He pulls it out of his pocket while at his desk, leaning back in his chair with his feet resting on the metal filing cabinet by his side. His finger runs across the grooves in the wooden bird’s feathers, tracking over where they switch from black to white and back again.

He knows it’s a magpie, could distinguish the slight tinge of green-blue bouncing off of its feathers like light on an oil spill any day. And yet…  _ magpie? _

His name was Jones, not Jonms. Unless he and Veronica had been totally and completely incorrect in their theory, today’s was supposed was supposed to start with an E.

Magpie, scavenger, corvid, bird—none of them started with an E.

He runs a frustrated hand through his beanie-less hair, the small hat staring back at him from its perch on the divide between his and Veronica’s desks. The desk across from his is, in fact, scattered with papers covered in Veronica’s elegant script, but the detective herself is nowhere to be found. She’d been gone since ten o’clock this morning, out shopping with Toni, and he feels so helplessly lost staring at this stupid little bird all on his own.

_ Come on, Jones. What’s another word for magpie, one that starts with E? _

His finger traces over the bird’s beak one last time, and then a word seems to materialize from the darkest corners of his mind, strung together by sheer will and the determination to put an end to the mystery once and for all. Elster—the German word for magpie. The last name of Gavin and Madeleine Elster in Hitchcock’s  _ Vertigo _ .

Another one of Hitchcock’s many birds. Just like the owl, just like the gulls.

Psycho, Young and Innocent, Vertigo. And that’s just off the top of his head—he’s sure to discover more by going through each present one by one. 

Who loves Hitchcock as much as he does? Who’s watched as many of his films as he has?

Veronica’s gone for the day, so Jughead’s been relegated to watching security footage from a nearby hospital missing far too many pharmaceuticals for it to be an accident, but he can do all that from home. The Poutine interrogation isn’t until tomorrow anyway, and so Jughead packs the hard drive with the footage into his messenger bag, shoves the beanie back on his head, and steps out of the precinct unseen.

Two subway rides and a full two hours later, Jughead’s sprawled out on the living room couch, a headache hammering away at his skull. As far as he’s been able to tell, the herring comes straight from the Agatha Christie novel he’s been rereading for the past week, the diary an essential symbol from In Cold Blood, and the birds from the various Hitchcock films. The rest of the clues don’t seem to be connected to any literary or cinematographic masterpieces at all, which leads him to question if he’s looking a bit too much into all of these gifts in the first place.

His eyes close against the sound pounding away in his ears, the blood rushing through him from the unease that’s come with not being able to decipher any of these clues past their mere appearances, and Jughead focuses on his breathing as he sinks further into the couch cushions. He just needs a clear mind, free of the tumbleweeds clouding his judgement, to figure this all out.

~~~

Apparently, he’d also needed a few extra hours of rest, as his eyes had stayed shut and wouldn’t open back up again until Betty walked by, her fingers curled around the handle of mug of coffee. Jughead sits up slowly, head spinning, as the smell of hot coffee brings life to his bones once again, and carefully takes the mug from her. She nods, about to walk back into the kitchen, when she turns back around to face him.

“Hey, I, uh, hope you don’t mind, but I opened this one up without you. I was just curious.” Her palm extends, fingers uncurling to reveal a pair of wooden skis, crossed one over the other in an X.

_ Spellbound. They’re from Spellbound _ . The title of Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller screams its name over and over again in his mind, and Jughead immediately reaches to pull the skis from her hand, replacing them with the mug of coffee he has yet to take a sip from. She looks surprised to find the mug back in her grasp, to find him so startled by a pair of skis, and he rushes to explain himself. “Skis, Spellbound,” he rasps, nearly breathless and voice still hoarse from hours of sleep. “Don’t worry about it, Betts, thanks though,” he finally manages to say, and picks his bag up from the carpet before slinging it over his shoulder.

He realizes that he’s still in yesterday’s clothes, but that’s all the better—he’s in a rush to get to work this morning. Veronica’s going to have a field day with this one.

~~~

It turns out that Veronica does have a field day when he shows up in the interrogation room that morning, but not because, as she so lovingly puts it, he “finally used his brain”.

No, she nearly laughs herself off of her perch on the small wooden table behind the one-way mirror because of the mailroom worker who knocks on the door right after Jughead’s finished ranting about the myriad clues pointing to Hitchcock. She’s got a nervousness to her features, her fingers squeezing the envelope in her grip tightly, and her feet shuffling noisily right past the threshold to the room.

“Hey, Ethel, come in,” Veronica beckons, a mischievous grin festering on her lips, and Jughead’s stomach drops to the linoleum floor immediately.

“Uh, hey,” she stutters, moving farther inside the room and shutting the door behind her, only to reveal a small gift that she’d been hiding behind her back the entire time. “I just wanted to give you this, uh, you know, before we all leave for the holidays tomorrow. Didn’t want to miss you, that’s all,” she stutters out, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear after dropping the gift and envelope to the table.

He knows his face must be paper white, can feel the blood dropping to meet his stomach, and barely moves a muscle until he manages to nod gratefully, thanking her with a few incoherent mumbles. She nods back, wishes the detectives a Merry Christmas, and steps back outside, only to be followed by Veronica’s obnoxious laughter.

“You should see yourself, Jones,” she chuckles, hand clutching at the pearls around her neck, “Like a deer in the headlights. You’re lucky that Miss Mystery’s just been sending you gifts all these weeks. Imagine if she’d come right out and said she loved you to your face. God, you’d probably just run away.” She’s laughing so hard that tears are dragging tracks of mascara down her cheeks, and Jughead turns around quickly, shoving both the gift and Ethel’s letter into his messenger bag for later.

“Could we just get back to the Poutine case?” he asks, all too ready for a change of topic. 

“Sure, sure,” Veronica waves the laughter out of the room, immediately serious again, and Jughead gives out a relieved sigh. He’ll read the letter later, deal with his feelings later.

And when he does, when he opens that envelope up all those hours later, back in the comfort of his softly-lit apartment, he’ll forget to put it back in his bag and accidentally leave it out on the counter before retreating to his bed for a night of fitful sleep, in exactly the right spot for an unsuspecting blonde to find it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! *And please don't kill me*
> 
> I promise that there is no unnecessary drama to be had next chapter, if that helps. If it doesn't, feel free to come scream at me over at @writeraquamarinara on tumblr.
> 
> Or, you could scream at me down below. I'd love to hear any questions, comments, concerns, theories, or reviews. 
> 
> Much love,  
> Mari <3


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